98 



REPORT — 1853. 



Mr. Cheshire (one of the Secretaries) read a communication from Lady 

 Bentham, widow of the late Brigadier-General Sir Samuel Bentham, on certain 

 statements contained in a paper read before the Statistical Section at Belfast in 

 September 1852, entitled ' Statistics of Portsea and Portsmouth Dockyard,' commu- 

 nicated by the Portsmouth and Portsea Philosophical Society, and published in the 

 quarterly Journals of the Statistical Society in June and September of the present 

 year, in which her Ladyship corrected some inaccuracies relating to the dockyard. 



On t?w Results of the Census of Great Britain in 1851, toith a Description of 

 the Machinery and Processes employed to obtain the Returns. By Edward 

 Cheshire, one of the Secretaries of the Section. 



The author commenced by reciting the onerous duties of the Registrar-General. 

 The objects of the census were explained, and the machinery employed to take it. 

 Great Britain was apportioned into 38,740 enumeration districts, and to each of 

 them a duly qualified enumerator was appointed. The author illustrated the extent 

 of this army of enumerators, and the labour of engaging their services on the same 

 day, by stating that it would take lOJ hours to count them, at the rate of one a 

 second, and that the army recently encamped at Chobham would not have sufficed 

 to enumerate a fourth of the population of Great Britain. The boundaries of the 

 enumeration districts, and the duties of the enumerators, were defined. The num- 

 ber of householders' schedules forwarded from the Census Office was 7,000,000, 

 weighing 40 tons. The processes employed to enumerate persons sleeping in barns, 

 tents, and the open air, and in vessels, were severally explained ; also the means by 

 which the numbers of British subjects in foreign States were obtained. The precau« 

 tions taken to secure accurate returns were recited ; they involved the final process 

 of a minute examination and totaling, at the Census Office, of 20 millions of entries, 

 contained on upwards of 1^ million of pages of the enumerators' books. The latter 

 were nearly 39,000 in number. The boundaries of the fourteen registration 

 divisions were traced, and the plan of publication of the census was explained. The 

 number of persons absent from Great Britain on the night of the 30th of March, 

 1851, was nearly 200,000 : — viz. army, navy, and merchant service, 162,490; and 

 British subjects resident and travelling in foreign countries, 33,775. The various 

 causes of displacements of the population were recited ; and the general movement 

 of the population on the occasion of the Great Exhibition was alluded to.* The 

 number of visits to the Crystal Palace were 6,039,195, — and the number of persona 

 who visited it was 2,000,000 ; nevertheless, the landing of only 65,233 aliens was 

 reported in the year. The population of Great Britain in 1851 is subjoined : — 



England 



Scotland 



Wales 



Islands 



Army, Navy, and Merchant Service 



Total 



8,281,734 

 1,375,479 



499,491 

 66,854 



162,490 



10,386,048 



8,640,154 



1,513,263 



506,230 



76,272 



10,735,919 



Total. 



16.921,888 



2,888,742 



1,005,721 



143,126 



162,490 



21,121,967 



In illustration of this 21,000,000 of people allusion was made to the Great Exhibi- 

 tion. On one or two occasions, 100,000 persons visited the Crystal Palace in a 

 single day, consequently 211 days of such a living stream would represent the num- 

 ber of the British population. Another way of realizing 21,000,000 of people was 

 arrived at by considering their numbers in relation to space : allowing a square yard 

 to each person, they would cover 7 square miles. The author supplied a further 

 illustration by stating that if all the people of Great Britain had to pass through 

 London in procession four abreast, and every facility was afforded for their free and 

 uninterrupted passage for 1 2 hours daily, Sundays excepted, it would take nearly 

 3 months for the whole population of Great Britain to file through, at quick march, 



* It is atated incidentally in the census, that in 1845 a million and a half of people on the Continent visited, 

 in pilgrimage, the Hols/ Coal at Trdves. 



